


Burning Bright

by Corycides



Series: 100 Fics in 100 Days [39]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grace Beaumont isn't willing to let her world - or her work - just fade away</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning Bright

When Grace was six years old her Grandpa Jonah took her camping in the desert. She hated the sand and the heat and the LIZARD she found in her SHOE, but once the sun went down her Grandpa gave her the stars. He pointed out the constellations and told her there were mountains on the moon and that if she worked really hard at school maybe one day she’d get to climb one.

He’d been an aerospace engineer, but he’d wanted her to be an astronaut. To use what he’d helped build to reach the stars.

Grace never quite made it that far. _That_ night, once they all knew, she went up to her cabin and lay on the grass to wait. The stars were so bright once the lights went out, so close. For the first time in her life they made Grace feel small and mean.

* * *

 

‘Wait,’ Ben said. Every year. ‘Wait.’

He was never entirely clear on what they were waiting for, maybe for someone to come up with an explanation that would inoculate them – or at least him – from blame. The longer he waited, of course, the harder it got. Until they didn’t just have to explain that they’d not only turned off the power, but they’d had a new source of power all this time they’d just kept to themselves.

‘It’s too limited,’ he said the last time they met, pinching his nose. ‘We can’t risk just one faction getting power, we need it to be universal.’

‘We can’t do that without labs and computers and fabbers,’ Grace said, frustration bubbling up in her voice. ‘We need to restore the power on a limited basis, if we are ever going to _make_ it universal.’

He shook his head. ‘No, Grace. We work out the schematics by hand, on paper, and once we’re ready-‘

‘I don’t need schematics,’ Grace snapped, banging her hand on the table. ‘I’m not a theoretician. I need a lab. You do remember how the nanogenerators work, right?’

‘Don’t patronise me, Grace. Of course I do.'

‘So you actually want me to experiment with building nanites that generate their own power source, in my kitchen? Is your plan to embrace post-humanity as the hivemind of a pile of grey goo?’

‘I won’t give you my pendant-‘

‘Nanogenerator.’ She bit her lip on the rest. It wasn't Ben's pendant, it was hers. She'd designed the nanites, she'd built them and their containment units, Her 'pet project' had already fulfilled the original aim of their research. That was petty though and not the point. 

Ben ignored her correction anyhow. 

‘-until I believe we can bring back the power without causing any more suffering.’

‘Every day you don’t bring back the power, you cause suffering.’

He just looked at her sadly – the unappreciated martyr – and left. Without his 'pendant', which continued the source code for the nanites - and on her more generous days, she was willing to admit she couldn't have completed the prototypes without his help - she couldn’t do anything useful. Turn on a blender for someone, power up one x-ray machine – if you could find a doctor not press ganged by one up and coming warlord or another to read it for you.

Grace tried to enlist Elizabeth, but the engineer was useless. As the last hold out she felt responsible for selling their collective scientific souls to capitalism, and it paralysed her. Set against Ben's surety, her doubts were helpless.

So they waited. Three years. Five years. Ten years. It was never the right time, not according to Ben anyhow. He was out-voted, but he just ignored the rest of them. Eventually he just stopped coming to the meetings and, when they sent someone to find him, he was gone. With his nanogenerator.

That was it. The world was done and dusted. 

Grace had never had a kid. Never wanted one when she could have science; never thought it was a good idea in the middle of the apocalypse. The inhaler she gave Danny Matheson was one of a box she'd sourced on the black market for Ben – back when they were still talking – and he'd turned down because it would make his family stand out too much.

He didn't stay long – just until the militia came to take him back, and she wasn't entirely sure what he'd expected her to do against a squad of armed soldiers – but it changed everything. Grace just hadn't expected it to be Flynn who came knocking at her door.

_'Or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll kick your door in.'_

'Monroe has Ben's pendant,' Flynn said, pointing at the board. 

Flickering lights picked out the various active pendants – and hell, she was doing it now too – and Grace assiduously memorised the sites of the other users. Some of them had lied about their locations, and some had never shared them at all. It would be useful to know, later, but mostly Grace was trying not to react to the sight of Ben's id fluttering away in Philadelphia. She'd assumed Ben had told Flynn everything – up until a few months before the end, they'd been best of friends – but if Randall was giving her access to the source code? He didn't have any more idea than General Monroe did of what they really had.

'I need you to get it back.'

Yes. She'd do that.

* * *

  
  


Her Grandpa has helped mankind reach the stars; Grace had thrust them back into the dark ages. That didn't mean they had to stay there.


End file.
